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Good evening. Here’s the latest.
1. Minus 28, with a wind chill reaching minus 53.
Those were the numbers in one city, Minneapolis, as the polar vortex blasted through the Midwest, and overnight temperatures are expected to go still lower. Much of the region has come to a standstill. At least eight deaths have been connected to the cold weather system.
This 3-D model shows how the vortex works. Above, looking out over frigid Chicago.
There were moments of strange beauty, like the frigid mist rising from Lake Michigan, and also oddities: “frost quakes” may have hit Pennsylvania, Ohio and Illinois. Here’s our roundup of the day’s weather reporting.
3. President Trump called his top intelligence leaders “naive” a day after they briefed Congress and directly contradicted Mr. Trump’s rosier appraisal of threats facing the U.S.
In a series of tweets, Mr. Trump insisted that the Islamic State’s control in parts of Iraq and Syria “will soon be destroyed” and that there was a “decent chance of Denuclearization” in North Korea. “Perhaps Intelligence should go back to school,” he wrote.
Above from left, the F.B.I. director, Christopher Wray; the C.I.A. director, Gina Haspel; and the director of national intelligence, Dan Coats.
Separately, more veterans will be able to choose private health care under new Trump administration rules. Critics fear this move could undermine the Department of Veterans Affairs.
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4. The president of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani, has offered President Trump reduced costs for keeping American troops in the country.
The offer came days after the U.S. reached a tentative peace deal with Taliban insurgents — in talks that did not include Afghan officials. Above, U.S. troops during an operation in Nangarhar Province in 2017.
Some in Afghanistan are concerned that the U.S., in its new haste to exit, is ceding too much to the Taliban too quickly. Mr. Ghani has a particular concern: The U.S. is the strongest ally sustaining him in power.
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5. The Federal Reserve stepped hard on the brakes.
For the first time in recent years — and in a surprising reversal from last month — it said it did not expect any additional interest rate increases anytime soon.
Jerome Powell, the Fed’s chairman, above, said at a news conference that while “we continue to expect that the American economy will grow at a solid pace,” some signs of weakness in consumer and business sentiment, as well as a global economic slowing in places like China, were “giving reason for caution.”
6. Facebook reported record earnings, gaining new users around the world as its revenues and profits climbed.
The company had expected its growth to slow as it spent to improve the privacy and security of users. But the financial results suggest that advertising remains strong, despite growing concerns about how Facebook handles people’s data.
One issue plaguing Facebook is its number of fake accounts. The company discloses its estimates of fake accounts each year, but a closer look reveals that the number might be more of a guess.
7. President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela said he was open to sitting down with the opposition, although it was unclear whether the olive branch was a genuine offer or just a delaying tactic.
In an interview with a Russian news agency, Mr. Maduro also rejected calls for a new election. His re-election last year has been widely disputed, and the U.S. and several European countries have called for a fresh vote.
In a video, Mr. Maduro warned the U.S. that intervening in his country “would lead to a Vietnam worse than they can imagine.” Protests continued in the capital, Caracas.
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8. Ahead of this weekend’s Super Bowl, our football reporter looks at how the host city — Atlanta, the cradle of the civil rights movement — is serving as a fitting backdrop for the complicated social and racial issues that have been roiling the N.F.L. Above, Patriots players and friends visit Martin Luther King Jr.’s birth home.
The game will be the Rams’ first shot at a championship since 1999, but they will play without their standout slot receiver, Cooper Kupp. He has joined the fraternity of players sidelined from their first Super Bowl by injury.
It will also be the first Super Bowl since the Supreme Court lifted a federal ban on sports betting, creating a billion-dollar market. The Times Magazine takes a deep dive into the potentially huge implications of that decision.
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9. “They always just focused on it …”
In the 1990s, Lorena Bobbitt was the topic of tabloid headlines and comedy skits after cutting off her husband’s penis and tossing it out of a car window. #MeToo has helped change the narrative, to that of a young immigrant who endured years of domestic violence and rape and finally couldn’t take it anymore.
She opened up about that life-changing night in a lengthy interview ahead of a four-part, Jordan Peele-produced documentary about her that debuts on Amazon Prime Video on Feb. 15.
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10. Finally, “early to bed, early to rise” may not be up to the individual, however wise.
Researchers say genes might be the crucial factor in making morning people and night owls. With the help of the UK Biobank, which tracks hundreds of thousands of volunteer subjects in Britain, researchers found hundreds of genetic variations in people who go to bed earlier — and who report greater well-being.
What they can’t say, at least yet, is whether night owls would have more well-being if they didn’t have to fight their own natural clocks.
Have a restful evening.
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Source : Nytimes
